A color wheel bends the band of the rainbow into a circle, so red and violet meet. Isaac Newton drew one of the first color circles in Opticks (1704). Painters have used wheels ever since to plan mixtures and color schemes.
| Group | Hues | How they come about |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | red, yellow, blue | the starting paints of the traditional wheel |
| Secondary | orange, green, violet | two primaries mixed |
| Tertiary | red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, red-violet | a primary mixed with the secondary beside it |
Key idea
On the painter's wheel the primaries are red, yellow and blue; each secondary sits between the two primaries that mix it; the six tertiaries fill the gaps. The wheel is a tool for arranging hues.
Why it works
The order follows mixing. Orange sits between red and yellow because, in this teaching model, red and yellow paint mix to orange. Neighbors on the wheel look related; colors far apart look different. That is what makes the wheel useful for planning.
Worked example: Reading the wheel
On the six-hue wheel, which color sits between yellow and blue?
- Find yellow and blue. They are both primaries.
- The color between them is the one they mix: green.
Answer: Green, a secondary.
Common mistake
Treating the color wheel as a law of nature. It is a tool, and there is more than one. Printers arrange their wheel around cyan, magenta and yellow; light and screens use red, green and blue. Each puts different colors opposite each other, so always say which wheel you mean. This course uses the painter's wheel unless it says otherwise; Unit 3 covers the others.